Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Life!

Strange things happen.
Sunday was a busy day and I had to attend a family meeting, go shopping and see our visitor off. My Plantar Fascia were feeling sore. I bought three tennis balls and rolled my heel on one as I rested. I dont know if it helped but I could feel it doing something. I have been using one in the office too.
By bedtime on Sunday, close to midnight, I had a headache and I muttered to my wife that I could not understand how my body had not had enough water. I took more water and went to sleep. And my sweet wife prayed for my headache to go away. I had a fitful, restless night.
Monday morning I woke up with the headache, some muscle soreness, a slight chill and some fatigue.
In the office, I kept nodding off. WTF?
I decided it must be Malaria. After all, I had traveled to Western Kenya and to Uganda. Some mosquito must have decided that sucking my blood is good and somehow pulled it off.
So I joined the queue of patient Kenyans at a nearby clinic. The doc recommended that the lab does a haemogram, Urinalysis (to check kidney functions), widal test (for typhoid) and blood test for checking Malaria parasites.
After waiting for close to two hours, the doctor tells me they found nothing and that I am just tired. I need to take a rest, he says I rest for two days of one week and I will be fine. He looks around and cant find the sick sheet form and I tell him its okay, I can ask for some days off.
He gives me some painkillers - Betapyn - and calls the next patient.
Hmmmmmm...
I am relieved that I am not sick. I mean, I have always traveled in the past several years - why should Malaria elect to make me sick now - is my immune system weak? Anyways, its not Malaria, so what is it?
What? Over-training? You think?
I pulled out Noakes' book and I can't reconcile what I feel with the symptoms of over-training. My performance on Sunday was the best this year and I have not lost appetite in food or sex and I certainly dont feel depressed or hate training.
Though I feel kinda pensive - but I have a lot on my mind lately. Family, business, money, etc etc.
So no OT - what is it then? And what about this developing injury - what will I do about it?
Is it a good idea to run today? What if I exacerbate this PF strain?
I don't know. I have run through my shin splints. I have also run through my tight achilles tendon and calves. I have also run through tight hamstrings. I have not run through knee pain and a pulled hamstring and its my body that dictated things.
It is my first time to get PF. I know It may be caused by several things that happened last week that I have eliminated: change in running surface, increase in mileage and change in terrain. Those are gone and I am effectively reducing mileage this week by 20K.
So you know what, I will just go and run and see what happens. If it stops me from running, it will have to do that and I will rest and recover but until then, I cannot stop.
I can run and so I will. Heck, I will even probably go hard. I just hope I wont doing the thousands of walking wounded scattered all over the globe. I have no experience with this PF shit so I have to wing it and hope for the best.
The best I can do now is to ensure I stretch my achilles and calves thoroughly after running and do enough dorsi flexing and plantar flexing.
And have the tennis ball running on my heel for a while.

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